history lesson

DayBird - May 11th

1310 ? In France, fifty-four members of the Knights Templar are burned at the stake as heretics. King Philip IV of France, deeply in debt to the Order, had them arrested. They were charged with apostasy, idolatry, heresy, obscene rituals and homosexuality, fraud, and worst of all, secrecy.

1720 ? Baron Karl Friedrich Hieronymus Freiherr von Münchhausen, German adventurer, is born. The Baron's astounding feats included riding cannonballs, travelling to the Moon, and an island of cheese, surrounded by a sea of milk. It?s possible.

1894 ? Martha Graham, an American dancer and choreographer regarded as one of the foremost pioneers of modern dance. When she passed in ?91, she was cremated, and her ashes were spread over the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in northern New Mexico.

1960 ? In Buenos Aires, Argentina, four Israeli Mossad agents capture fugitive Nazi Adolf Eichmann, living under the assumed name Ricardo Klement. Suh weet! After the war, he fled to Argentina using a fraudulently obtained laissez-passer issued by the International Red Cross. He was found guilty and executed by hanging in 1962.

1981 ? Bob Marley, Jamaican singer and musician dies. He was diagnosed as having a cancerous growth on his big toe that had metastasized and spread to his brain, liver and lungs. Less than eight months later, Bob Marley, died in Miami, Floria. He was only 36 years old.

1987 ? Klaus Barbie, the Butcher of Lyon, former Nazi Gestapo chief of German-occupied Lyon, France, goes on trial for crimes against humanity. He personally tortured prisoners and is responsible for thousands of deaths, including one of my favorite resistance fighters, Jean Moulin.

He returned to Germany, and at the end of the war burned off his SS tattoo and assumed a new identity. He surrendered himself to the U.S. Counter-Intelligence Corps after the Americans offered him money and protection in exchange for his intelligence services. We are assholes. Barbie worked as a U.S. agent in Germany for two years, and the Americans shielded him from French prosecutors trying to track him down. In 1949, Barbie and his family were smuggled by the Americans to South America. Barbie settled in Bolivia and continued his work as a U.S. agent.

France offered Bolivia aid in exchange for Barbie, and they said, our bad, he's right here.

On July 4, 1987, he was found guilty. For his crimes, the 73-year-old Barbie was sentenced to spend the rest of his life in prison, France's highest punishment.